Instruction for authors

The submission stage

Authors are requested to submit their manuscripts in PDF format electronically through the web, see online submission.A Latex2e package, adapted to JSWSC, is available for download, but the use of Latex is not mandatory, any text processor may be used. Note that the format of the published version of the paper will be different from the submitted version, due to the typesetting software used in the production process.

Manuscripts must be submitted in one single file including text, figures, tables and, in case of revisions upon review, the response to the referees and the editor if applicable. If the material consists of several files they must be compressed into a single ZIP file before submission. Free open source software for ZIP compression can be obtained from www.7-zip.org. The full article in PDF format must be included in the ZIP
file. In order to facilitate reviewing the manuscript must be submitted in single-column format, and lines must be numbered.

The Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate can only consider articles for publication which have been approved by all co-authors and which have not been published elsewhere and are not currently submitted for publication in another journal. When an author has used a figure or a table from another publication (including his own publications), he must clearly indicate the origin of the material and, if applicable, should also obtain the permission for reproduction from the publisher concerned. All articles are peer reviewed, and only articles which meet the quality criteria of JSWSC can be accepted for publication.

The acceptance stage

After having been accepted for publication, an electronic version of the manuscript in one of the following formats is required: for the text LaTeX/LaTeX2e, Word, RTF; for the figures EPS, TIF, JPG, PNG, in high resolution (≥300 dpi).

Authors are informed that any element missing from an accepted article (electronic files of the text, tables, figures in good quality) will delay the publication.

Style Guide

General Remarks

All pages must be numbered. The manuscript should be presented as follows: title, authors, abstract, introduction, body including materials and methods, results, discussion and conclusion, acknowledgments, annexes, references.

Section and subsection headings should be numbered following the international numbering system (1., 1.1., 1.1.1., etc.).

Punctuation characteristics of the English language should be used (semicolons, colons, question marks and exclamation marks are never preceded by a space). There is no space between opening bracket and the following word or closing bracket and the preceding word. Accented letters (such as ê) should be accented also when printed in uppercase (i.e., Ê). Small capital font should not be used.

The title

The title should be short and communicative; avoid acronyms, most acronyms are understood only by specialists in the field.

The title page should include the surname and forenames (in full) of each author, their department and institution, the e-mail address of the corresponding author (who should be identified by an asterisk), and a short title (running head) of no more than 45 characters including spaces.

The abstract

The abstract should be short but informative and should present the essence of the paper.

JSWSC supports the use of structured abstracts. Similar to a traditional abstract, a structured abstract summarizes the content of the paper, but in an explicitly structured manner. For doing so, the structured abstract uses headings that precede short paragraphs. Three paragraphs, entitled "Aims", "Methods", and "Results", are mandatory. When appropriate, the structured abstract may use an introductory paragraph entitled "Context", and a final paragraph entitled "Conclusions". Note that the use of a structured abstract is not mandatory, authors who prefer the traditional form are invited to implicitly follow the logical structure indicated above.

Symbol, Equations and Numbers

Writing of measurements, data and symbols should adhere to international convention (ISO), and they should always be written in italic.

SI units should be used: the unit "litre" should be abbreviated as "L" (also mL, µL, etc.), minutes as min, temperature as °C or K. All units should be typeset in Roman. Note that Angstrom is not accepted anymore and should be replaced by nanometer or picometer. Multiple units should be written with negative exponents (example: W·m-1·K-1).

Equations that are referred to in the text should be numbered sequentially throughout the text with the number on the right-hand side (i.e., (1), (2), (3)). Do not add punctuation at the end.

Vectors and matrices should be written in bold.

It is important to distinguish between ln (= loge) and lg (= log10). Use a Roman e for an exponential e. But except for simple cases, exponential expressions, especially those containing subscripts or superscripts, are clearer if the notation exp(...) is used. Use a Roman d for a differential d (for example: tan(α) = dy/dx).

Figures and Tables

Each figure and each table must be referenced in the text. Figures should be numbered sequentially (Figure 1, Figure 2, ...), and should be cited in the text as Figure 1, Figure 2 and (Fig. 1), (Fig. 2) if in parentheses. Each figure and each table should have a brief caption describing it. Captions should be placed below the figure and above the table.

Authors should remember that the printed quality of illustrations can never be better than the quality of the original artwork. Lettering (symbols, numbers, etc.) should be of sufficient size to remain legible after reduction (letters 1.5-2 mm high after reduction to either one- or two-column format). Authors should be aware that as part of the production and typesetting processes, figures may be resized to fit the format of the journal. Scaling of graphics will, of course, affect line thickness and text size in the figures. Figures should be planned for the column width (8.8 cm) of the journal. If the details shown require larger size, 1.5 or 2 columns figure width may be used. The final size of capital letters or numerals in a figure usually lies within the range 1.6-2.3 mm to avoid any disproportion between figure/text character sizes.

Figures submitted in colour appear in colour in the published version.

References

It is important to confirm the accuracy of bibliographic information in references. This has become more important with the online version. Hyperlinks will be programmed to enable readers to jump directly to the material cited. If your cited references are incorrect or incomplete (e.g., missing author name, or an incorrect volume number or page), the associated hyperlink may fail, and the usefulness of your paper in the online environment may be reduced.

The bibliography serves to enable the reader to examine background information and additional material. Therefore the bibliography must contain only items which are self-contained, well documented, and in principle accessible to any reader of JSWSC. Abstracts for conference presentations and the presentations themselves are not valid citations unless documented, e.g., in a proceedings collection, and publicly accessible. Links to URLs and references to personal or private communications may be specified in the body but must not appear in the bibliography except for DOI and similar pointers.

References are normally cited in the text by placing the name(s) and the year in parentheses, without any comma between them. If citations are made within the normal running text, only the year(s) should be placed in parentheses. If there are two authors for one citation, both names should be given, separated by an ampersand (&). If there are more than two authors, only the first name should be given, followed by "et al.". Commas should be used only to separate two or more years linked with one author or author group. If two or more citations are made in one set of parentheses, they should be separated by a semi-colon. If more than one citation for a particular author or author group is made for the same year, "a", "b", "c", etc. should be added to the year. The following examples illustrate the required style:

Authors' initials are permitted only in exceptional cases, for example, to distinguish between two authors
with the same surname.

Each literature citation made in the body of the paper must have a corresponding entry in the References at the end of the paper. The References must contain only the references cited in the text, tables or figure captions, ordered alphabetically by surname (with initials following). If there are several references to the same first author, they should be entered according to the following scheme:

1. One author: chronologically
2. Author, one co-author: alphabetically by co-author, then chronologically
3. Author, two or more co-authors: chronologically.
Please note that for papers that have more than ten authors, only the first five should be given, followed by "et al."

Annexes and Electronic-only material

Use annexes if vital to the understanding of complex formulae. In that case, treat them as normal sections. If there are equations, they should be numbered separately from those in the main text as (A.1), (A.2), etc. when in Annex A.

Authors may submit multimedia attachments to enhance the online versions of published articles. Multimedia attachments typically consist of video clips, animations or supplementary data such as data files, tables of extra information or extra figures, programs, etc. They can add to the reader's understanding and present results in attractive ways. For more information on the submission of this material (file requirements, etc.), please contact the Production Office.

Proofs and Offprint

Proofs will be sent by electronic mail to the corresponding author indicated on the title page. The main aim of proofreading is to correct errors which may have occurred during the production process, but not to modify the content of the paper. Authors should keep in mind that reading and approving proofs is their responsibility. Corrections should therefore be clear. The use of standard proof correction marks is recommended. Files typeset using Word, WordPerfect, or RTF need heavy retyping (equations and special characters are lost during the conversion process). The reproduction of artwork, the layout of the pages and equation spacing introduced by the production staff should be carefully checked. The proofs, once corrected, should be returned to the publisher within 48 hours of reception.